A few notes about how I've cataloged the following: Directors are labeled under their most commonly known name (example: Aristide Massaccesi will be filed under Joe D'Amato). Films are listed under their most commonly known titles with other common alternate titles in parenthesis (example: City of the Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell)).

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

On the right side of my blog you will see a poll. This poll was created to give you, my dear readers, the power to tell me what you want to read about for my next director retrospective. So...if you haven't voted yet all I can is this: What are you waiting for! The race is tight (I'm a little shocked there's no love for Hal Ashby), and it appears that right now Ken Russell is going to win this thing, but Peter Weir has caught up a bit, and Nicolas Roeg is starting to creep up there, too. Only 26 people have voted so get on it, people! Once the winner is revealed I'll start as soon as I can on catching up with their movies.*

*Sadly this may come at the expense of the Italian Horror Blogathon. I've acquiesced to the fact that I just don't think I can do it this year (too much school and work...which happens to be school, too); besides, there will be plenty of great blogathons and Halloween-themed posts out there for everyone to discover. I'm also participating in the Wonders in the Dark Halloween countdown, so I'll get my chance to write about Italian horror over there (I already have), and if you haven't checked out the content over there for the countdown, do so as soon as possible. It's a lot of fun, and there's usually great discussions about the films in the comments section.

YOUR VIEWS INTRIGUE ME, AND I WISH TO SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR NEWSLETTER

"I suppose I think of film criticism the way I've heard Hebrew scholars describe their approach to the Torah: It's not about discovering dogma, it's about learning to ask meaningful questions, even if you can never fully answer them."

--Jim Emerson

"Style is supposed to express content, dammit--not disguise a lack of it! The meaning of a film is in what these images on the screen (and don't forget the sounds!) do to you while you experience them [...] If you ask me, we should stop seeing style and content as separate entities. In a good film, they're a natural unity."

-- Peet Gelderblom

"Clearly, this does not mean that Friday the 13th is more "valuable" than Jeanne Dielman [...] But, given the great many people who have seen Friday the 13th, where is the intellectual dignity in saying, "it's crap", and being done with it? Anything that has become an iconic part of popular culture is therefore inherently worthy of exploration if not automatic respect [...] If we simply throw it out with the bathwater, on the grounds that it isn't "artistic", we also throw out the possibility of ever finding out."